Book Review: The Pirate Devlin by Mark Keating
The Pirate Devlin by Mark Keating. © 2010 Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 9780446563901. Hardback. Adventure/Historical Fiction. 352 pages. Source: ARC furnished by the publishers.
Synopsis: An injured French officer struggles along a desolate stretch of West African coastline, desperate to hold on to his secret. Alas for him, his tale is soon ended, and violently, but a young pirate recruit, Patrick Devlin, who happens to speak fluent French, comes away from their encounter with a new pair of boots and a treasure map. From there the adventures of the pirate Devlin, his shipmates, and those who wish them dead move forward without restraint, through broadside barrages and subterfuge and brutal encounters on land and at sea, where nothing is as it appears to be at first glance. In these pages readers will meet Blackbeard and his cohorts, Portuguese colonial governors and French commandants, officials of the East India Company and Royal Naval officers, fresh-faced midshipmen and gnarly, scarred, and drunken pirate crewmen. But none of these is as impressive and memorable as the former servant and newly minted pirate captain Patrick Devlin, unless it’s the man he once served on board a British man-of-war, a man now sworn to kill him!
Review: I was disappointed by this. On the whole, it’s a perfectly competent story, though set up for sequels. Patrick Devlin is an interesting character and showed some promise. But the promise isn’t fulfilled.
The cover copy specifically mentions that we meet Blackbeard in the pages of this story. Well, kinda. For about 3 pages. The plot was very basic. But if I’m engrossed enough by a book, that doesn’t bother me. Here, I wasn’t engrossed. In fact, there were times I was actively pulled out of the story. The writing was lazy. There were far too many times a sentence read something like “he told him he would allow him to live if he followed his orders.” No names in entire sentences, which is sloppy (and confusing). Throw us a name every now and then so we know which he is which. Also, while the author obviously did a bit of research on ships, he tossed in a sea chantey, “Leave Her, Johnny,” complete with lyrics, that didn’t exist in 1717. When I came across it, it seemed to me the song was written later than when the story took place (I am not unfamiliar with sea chanteys). Less than five minutes on Google confirmed my suspicions: the earliest that song was written was about the time of the potato famine (1840s). He did fine with the two ballads later in the book but this was very jarring for me. I realize that most readers won’t know much about sea chanteys, but for those of us who do, it’s annoying to see something this anachronistic in the story.
That, combined with the phrase “the lightning raped the sky” on the next page, nearly made me stop reading. Lightning doesn’t rape the sky. And honestly, that’s offensive. And I’m not someone easily offended. It’s as if the author didn’t realize women (or girls) would even be reading this book. Another instance is when a character wants to go ashore with the other pirates for “raping and loosing.” Again, unnecessary and inaccurate. I’m not saying pirates didn’t rape women. What I’m saying is that raping and whoring or carousing are two very different things, and the description of what happened was definitely whoring and carousing. And if you’re trying to make the pirates your good guys, you don’t put words like this in their mouths. Also, the Caribbean islands in the Golden Age of Piracy were chock full of prostitutes. Half of the population of any given island pirates regularly visited were prostitutes (and other willing women). Nor is there a rape scene in the book–it’s all prostitutes. So it’s a matter of throwing a loaded and inaccurate word out there for no purpose. Sloppy and insensitive. Because it certainly doesn’t come across like the scene in Yellowbeard where Madeline Kahn says they were having a cuddle and Graham Chapman says he was raping her. That was comedy. This, not so much.
And then we have instances like this: “Coxon watched the two marines gather like bridesmaids…” Bridesmaids? Sailors equated to bridesmaids? When a simile makes you stop reading and think WTF did that just say, it’s bad. So if you want a good Blackbeard story, avoid this and pick up Tim Powers’s On Stranger Tides (which has been very loosely adapted for the new PotC movie). If you want a rollicking good swashbuckling pirate story, go for Sabatini’s Captain Blood. Because sadly The Pirate Devlin just doesn’t deliver.
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